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| Yes | 46% | 17 votes | Total: 37 votes | |
| No | 54% | 20 votes |
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Add to FavoritesToday's war on terror is not a war by traditional standards. It does not abide by the Geneva Convention or any other rules of war as we know it. There is no clearly identifiable enemy, no obvious lines of battle and no objectives in the traditional sense which need to be taken. In short, the rules of war in the 21st century have changed. We are not fighting a sovereign nation with a uniformed regular army. We don't even have the benefit of fighting a guerilla war as we did in Viet Nam in which even the local Viet Cong could be identified and rooted out to some extent. In Iraq we are fighting shadows. The only problem is these shadows strike back in brutal and bloody ways that we cannot conceive of while we still think along the lines of conventional warfare.
Terrorist strike at the very heart of our country using all manner of methods from commercial airliners to explosives laced vehicles. They kidnap our citizens and soldiers and put them on public display before savagely executing them in all manner of grotesque and inhumane ways. They indiscriminately send suicide bombers into public markets, killing and maiming hundreds of innocent civilians, women and children. They sacrifice themselves gloriously in the hope of killing only a few people. This is an enemy that is not bound by the rules of war. This is an enemy that we can never defeat by conventional means. There is no way to win a war playing by the rules if your enemy is not bound by those same rules.
Government sponsored assassinations, while brutal and barbaric is an effective method of playing by the enemy's twisted sense of the rules. Until we as Americans either accept the fact that we can't win the war on terror and give up or accept that in order to win we have to play by the same rules as the terrorists we have no hope of making any inroads into an already agonizingly long war. We must become the very thing we despise. We must terrorize the terrorists. Show them that they and their families are as equally at risk as we and our families. We must level the playing field and stop trying to wage conventional war on the shadows that are the terrorists.
Small groups of specialized soldiers operating secretly under cover in country unfettered by the restrictions of the Geneva Convention would be far more effective at waging a war of terror on the terrorists than an entire division of regular army troops. Until the terrorist have something to fear, they will continue on their rampage of wonton destruction. Knowing that they are afforded undeserved protection under the Geneva Convention by our troops, and assured that the American people will not stand for the same inhumane treatment that they have generously dished out to their victims, the terrorist can predict our actions and counteract them.
Authorizing the assassination of known members of terrorist groups will be the first step in lifting the chains that bind our military from taking the actions necessary to truly protecting our great nation. No longer can we afford to treat the terrorist and insurgents as combatants in a war and provide the protections that such a label offers. We must be able to wage unrestricted warfare on the terrorist how, when and where it becomes necessary to do so. Our armed forces must be able to execute their duties with rapid dispatch without fear of repercussions or retribution by their own government. State sponsored assassinations are the beginning of a new shift in policy for handling these unconventional conditions.
Of course this is not to say that there should be no restrictions on this policy. In order to protect the freedoms and liberties that make this country so great this type of policy must remain under constant scrutiny to ensure it is not inappropriately abused. Desperate times call for desperate measures. Given the number of American lives lost in the war on terror so far and given the overall lack of advancement of our goals over the past year, the world today can certainly be described as being in desperate times. While this is a valid policy to advance the interests of the nation, it is a policy that must be conducted with the highest degree of integrity and supported by the best intelligence possible regarding the potential targets of such a policy.
Learn more about this author, Joseph Whalen.
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No
The ban on government-sponsored assassinations should absolutely, positively not be repealed. While there are, perhaps, reasons why removing the band would be militarily expedient and perhaps improve the short-term security of the United States, it is a morally vacant proposal whose execution would rely on far too many assumptions to ever be permissible.
The faulty assumption that government-sponsored assassinations rest upon is that the government is right. It is unfortunate, but we live in a day and age where the government is often wrong, the CIA is often wrong, the FBI is often wrong, and military intelligence is often wrong. Therefore, the government cannot be relied upon to kill the right person, to kill a guilty person, or even a person that poses a threat to the United States. In addition to this, ask yourself, what right do we have?
While it is perhaps immediately expedient to dispatch people we deem enemies, it is problematic in two key ways. One, it is a slippery slope. Once you start to kill people to protect national security, what is to stop you from killing people to protect political interests. How are we guaranteed that there will always be a way to tell the difference? The answer is that we aren't, because even if the government can openly sponsor assassinations, they won't do it in the open because it is wrong, and would create new enemies. So it will always take place in the dark, and therefore cannot be trusted to be in the interests of national security.
Second, there is no reason on earth that we should stoop to the same moral principals as our enemies, or those that threaten our security. Perhaps when faced with a life or death situation, it is necessary and acceptable to use lethal force to defend oneself. But defending a nation against threats you can know very little about is a very different matter. The manslaughter example cannot be extrapolated outward to defend a nation.
There are other reasons not to relax this kind of ban. If the United States is allowed to do it elsewhere, what is to stop other nations from doing it here, ultimately it would not contribute in any way to national security, but rather it would undermine long-term security efforts by setting an example of how low it is acceptable to go. The world is an ugly place, allowing governments to kill people they disagreed with would only make it uglier. Governments should provide structure the structure necessary for citizens to conduct their lives, they should not violate their own laws.
Learn more about this author, Michael Wooldridge.
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